


The Story of Us

by META_mahn



Series: Hope Project [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Note: Rating may change., Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, WELCOME TO HELL (hopefully), dont let your memes be memes, is despacito 2 confirmed yet, ooh what's this work skin feature, undertale 2 is out so anything is possible, we have cookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-08-13 23:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/META_mahn/pseuds/META_mahn
Summary: The start of something new.





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Prologue**

-A Premonition-

 

“So how many hostile mages are outside?” Frisk asked.

**_Boom._ **

The agent’s lip quivered as he tuned the radar, performing a wide-band sweep. After about a minute, he replied. “Five.”

**_Boom. Brack-ala-boom._ **

“Five? It sounds like a warzone out there!” Chara shouted at the agent. He winced as I cuffed Chara over the head. This was stressful for all of us in the bunker. We couldn’t afford to be screaming at each other right now.

**_Boom._ **

“Yes...that’s the lumens for you.” he squeaked out, starting to regain some composure. “I think they have at least two relics among them…”

**_Crack-OOM!_ **

“Which ones?” Frisk now asked. “And how far away is the nearest Sage?”

“A shard of Zeus’s thunderbolt and a piece of Talaria,” he answered. Frisk’s lips pursed as she considered this, turning white as he continued, “and the nearest Sage is Nicholas who’s coming as quick as he can. But it’ll take five minutes.”

**_THRACK!_ **

“We don’t even have _one._ ” I answered.

“I know.” the agent sighed. “So, any tricks up your sleeve, children? Anything that you can use to get us out right now?”

The door to the bunker exploded open, flying across the room as Chara flipped a table up in time to save us from the rain of shrapnel. Five hooded figures filed in, two of them holding small objects encased in amber. All of them hummed with magic. We prepared ours, my paws glowing with vibrant rainbow energy tinted with red. Beside me, the others began casting layer after layer of spell on their bodies.

“Is it bad if I said ‘no?’” Chara asked, tensing up, ready to fight her way out.


	2. Chapter 2: A Good Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little botched. A little forced, and some of the original Undertale theme of pacifism had to be dropped.

**Chapter 2: A Good Day**

-Asriel-

 

I snapped awake to a cold sweat, a tangled mess of blanket, and my own  _ very unflattering  _ yelp as I jumped up, whacking the stubs of my horns on the bottom side of the bunk. Jeez, a nightmare. Or was it one? I wasn’t sure. Time check. Date check. Reality check, though probably unnecessary. I’ve been pretty alive-feeling for a little over a year at this point as the Newleaf School was slowly being built. At least, if the sweat, heavy breathing, and headache were real then so was I. Just to be sure, I pat myself a few times. No leaves, no stem, no flower-face, just the body of an anthropomorphic goat.

And I still hadn’t performed a time check. The smartphone and its charging dock with the shiny brushed aluminum finish and the LCD screen that wasn’t salvaged from the dump of the dumps stated it was a little before seven in the morning, on August 11, a little stripe below that stating it was  The little cake icon on the dock stated that it was my birthday. Oh no.

Oh no. Birthdays were not something very good in this family, or at least amongst the children. I sneakily glanced around, hoping no one I was really looking out for was in the room currently. Frisk was gentle with her ‘birthday tidings of joy,’ but Chara was the one that I was  _ absolutely terrified of. _

Luckily she always woke up by eight in the morning at the earliest during the summer. And lucky me, I had a summer birthday. Now was a good time to  _ run. _ Of course, it was only a matter of distance, since she was more fit than the two of us other siblings combined. But unlucky for me, Chara’s bed was empty. This was bad.

I sighed and picked out my clothes for today. Sadly, none of the shirts and shorts I really liked wearing around were available. This is what I got for not washing my clothes until I really had to. Better than Chara, at least. Then again she was raised in a much dirtier time, so I suppose she really didn’t care about wearing clothes twice or three times before washing them.

_ Then again _ , the girl also re-wore unwashed underwear on occasion. My lip curled at the thought, exposing the sharp incisor. She really had no standards.

_ Then again, again, _ be careful of what you wish for. If she wasn’t like this I doubt she’d be the Chara we know. And the Chara we know is one we liked. Even if she had no-

An ice-cold spray hit my face, shocking me out of my stupor of thought. For the second time today, I let out a very unmanly scream.

“Morning,” the words of my assailant floated down. Cleaning my eyes from the icy super soaker-launched water, Frisk was quietly giggling, hanging over the side of the bed, her hazel-brown eyes watching me as I let out a low growl.

“I was just thinking of running,” I complained.

“Do it soon, then. Happy birthday, by the way.” the small figure stated as she hopped off the top bunk to go do her hair again. Even for her age, Frisk was a little on the small end of humans. Though, she didn’t seem to care too much about that small size.

What did however matter about her was that currently at the same time I was also talking to the person who broke the Barrier keeping the monsters trapped underground, volunteered to become a political face for all monsterkind as a thirteen-year-old child, was doing surprisingly well at it, was still collecting insurance payouts from her past human family, and was doing all of this on only one working lung. And I owe her my life. She was pretty cool as far as siblings go and definitely the smartest of all of us. But I live in a family of cool siblings.

“Run while you can, Asriel,” Frisk yelled from the bathroom. “I think Chara’s getting the whole bucket.”

Down below some incoherent shouting from our mother, Toriel, resonated up the stairs, probably something like “You better not ruin the beds or the carpet, or you’re cleaning it yourself!” A trivial task with magic, anyways. Which meant that yes, she probably was getting a whole bucket of-

The bedroom door flung open as a large plastic bucket full of ice water was flung at my face. I didn’t even scream this time. I was just disappointed.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” came the shouting of a certain Chara Dreemurr, tackling me against the wall, my head still covered by the bucket. Chara was on more towards the opposite end of the spectrum of Frisk. While Frisk looked quite innocent, Chara always looked downright mischievous. It was just some way her natural expression settled that always made her look like she was planning something that would get someone potentially hurt. Judging by what she did on a somewhat normal basis, for all we care she  _ was  _ always planning that. I can’t read minds, so how should I confirm or debunk myself.

Chara normally served as a bodyguard of sorts for Frisk, being the most physically fit out of all of us. Rumor has it that the Secret Service wanted to be Frisk’s bodyguards, but Chara ‘proved herself’ by running through and performing well on an accelerated exam. So they let a fourteen-year-old child guard another fourteen-year-old child.

“Please get the bucket off my head,” I grumbled, as Chara’s warm body was pressing mine deeper into the blankets and cushions before getting up and removing the bucket, me getting to work generating a little bit of magical heat to vaporize all the water now trapped in the bed materials. Dammit, Chara.

“Hey, it woke you up at least. Get up, dad made pancakes and mom’s made snails,” she informed us. That got us all moving much faster than before.

“You woke up early.” I commented.

“I knew you’d probably try to run away.” Chara replied. “I stole their coffee to wake up for this.”

* * *

As it turns out, our parents had been slightly unamused by her theft but didn’t care. She was incurable, anyways. Then again I doubt anyone really wanted to ‘fix’ Chara, especially when distracted by conservatively sized portions of savory snails in a tasteful amount of olive oil, baguette, and lots of pancakes. Cooked by mom and dad.

You’d think the two humans of the family would wrinkle and turn up their nose at the unappetizing appearance of snails, especially as many other modern humans seemed to deem it something quite...dirty. But Chara’s first time trying snail had her smiling in delight, and Frisk’s first time reportedly was a pleasant experience. They both said it was normally a dish for royalty, but I doubted modern-day royals preferred it over the variety of meals they could otherwise get. Like a nice, well-glazed rack of barbecued ribs, the finest cuts from artisan pigs.

I’m making myself hungry. But the point has been made: Comparatively, the idea of snail is...unappetizing. Well, to the normal person.

Oh, empathy feels nice. Yeah, that’s empathy. What a weird way to experience empathy.

Mom noticed the funny look on my face. “Is something wrong, Asriel?” she asked, her voice with a small tint of concern but with the knowledge that at the very least what was troubling me wasn’t the food.

“I’m feeling fine,” I replied, with a smile. “It just feels nice to…”

I trailed off. I still couldn’t get over how awkward I sounded whenever I talked about my leafy past. What do I say? “Be alive again?” No, there was a certain red-eyed girl carrying a heavy burden. Of course, she wouldn’t let it show. Her smile covered everything up. Do I say “Feel something again?” I shivered a little at the thought, ever so imperceptibly.

This delay was awful. This probably caused more problems than what I was trying to solve. I let out a puff of air, slightly amused at my own hesitation to talk. “Oh, I can’t think of what to say.” I replied, leaning back in my chair. “This is why I’m not the diplomat.” As evidenced by the relaxation of their forms, their concern was gone. At least the idea was got across. Damn skill learned from being a flower. Ah, at least it was only me feeling slightly sour over using this ill-gotten ability.

The doorbell rung, the sound of a mail truck driving off following soon after. Chara went to fetch the mail, as was required of her official occupation. After opening it a fair distance away from us, she tossed a handful of letters at Frisk, kept one for herself, tossed another handful at dad, and one at me, before gently handing one to mom, keeping the last to herself, and loudly flopping down in her chair. “It feels so  _ wrong _ to have to check letters for hazards,” she complained.

“Even on today, work doesn’t stop.” dad replied, already ripping open letters. Lots of official seals and fancy lines of text came out of the envelope. “It feels wrong, I know, but the paperwork is also part of being a leader in the modern day. You do your job and we do ours, and we can do anything, okay?”

“At least I’m a decent speed reader,” Frisk mumbled, hazel eyes already flitting across the first paper.

* * *

As it turns out, most of their work was simply the formalization of a few contracts. Frisk’s stack had a paycheck in it from Capitol Hill as well as a life insurance check, which were promptly given to our parents. Chara’s, too, had a paycheck in it as well. Technically they were both employed by the government, Frisk under the diplomatic services and Chara under diplomatic security so they got money, but they were too young to hold any sort of job, so instead the paychecks were addressed to our parents. And, by the sound of two phones buzzing, our parents had transferred over a portion of the money written on the paycheck as always. They would transfer all of it, but Frisk being the smart one told them to keep it along with the life insurance money. Monsters having any human currency was something to be valued. Besides, the excess went into our college savings anyways.

And here I was, with no job. Well, at the least I didn’t have any responsibilities to uphold besides being a student and a kid. The downside was that I had no money whatsoever except for what they gave me. Judging by the buzzing of my phone, it seems like they each just handed me a third of their recent ‘allowances.’ As we always did.

Sucked that I was essentially mooching off of those two. But I would rather be uncomfortable and have a motivation to get a job as soon as possible than be a more plant-like version of myself, who would probably take the money with no complaints whatsoever. Even if the motivation was probably bad for me.

So the three of us were relaxing in our room, or at least two of us were relaxing, and Frisk was combing through legal document after legal document, wearing glasses that were more preventative measures rather than fixing an issue present. I rolled over a little.

_ Crunch. _

And I rolled back in surprise. Oh, right.  _ My mail. _ I had been so distracted by the matters of others that I forgot to deal with my own issue right here. The letter opened easily to the power of well-trimmed claws.

The moment I saw the address, I already knew what it was. Alphys had sent me my final lab result. And...I was all clean. I breathed a sigh of relief. Over the past few months, I was required to consistently go to Alphys’s lab to make sure I wasn’t going to do something weird, like...die. Again. Although I tried to tell her I felt fine, she wasn’t having any of it. Of course, she was rightfully scared because of the things in  _ the basement _ ...but they didn’t fix me like she tried to fix those. Looking at the lab report again, I still had some levels of fluctuation in my magic, reacting a little more violently than a perfectly stable monster’s magic would. Oh well, liveable.

“Hey.” Chara spoke up, her voice filling the room. The other two of us looked. “Wanna go out to the nearby mall? Just to mess around and see what’s cool.”

That...really wasn’t a bad thought. We agreed. And with the permission of our parents, we took the public transport there.

* * *

-Frisk-

 

“THEY STOCKED THAT?” Chara almost squealed out in joy.

“What?” I asked, following her pointing finger to the little store labeled...Japan Direct. Oh, so it was anime. I squinted, trying to trace to what she was pointing at among the masses of objects. She wasn’t much of a Naruto person, definitely not an Evangelion person, and while there were boxes on boxes of gunpla, she was always too impatient to assemble even one...oh.

Oh my god. Oh, I’d recognize that face anywhere. Those headphones, that tuft of hair, those lighting bolt hairclips...

“They...stocked all the Symphogear albums.” Asriel mumbled, in amazement of the rarest of all things as the three of us almost beelined for the store. The show itself was very disappointingly low on the popularity lists outside of Japan, but Alphys found it from her and Undyne’s binge day when they tried to watch as many shows that weren’t very high on the ratings lists. She sent it to us as a recommendation, and we had been struggling to not download the music from the show illegally ever since. Oh, the joys of having the crosshair of politics over your shoulder at all times.

“What a sight…” I whispered as we walked in, directly for the albums, ready for our bank accounts to get hit by quite the margin for this. And take a hit they did, the three of us walking out, Chara’s backpack now full of CDs and our bank accounts down a fair margin of disposable income. It didn’t help that we got distracted by a few cool posters, too. Our weakness has been discovered, I supposed.

“Productive day, I guess,” Asriel commented as we walked down the halls of the mall to the food court, where we each ordered a cheeseburger and small fries. I was inclined to agree. It was hard to, with a nice family together. Eating cheeseburgers, with a few monsters and humans dotted around the food court as well as a backpack full of rare merchandise. The recently hired janitor, a Woshua, nudged my feet politely so he could clean up the little bits of salt dropped on the floor. It was a small detail most janitors would glance over, but these monsters had a neurotic cleanliness almost bred into them.

“Shoe wash?” the small, turtle-like monster asked. We accepted. But as the Woshua cleaned my shoes, a sense of unease settled over me. It wasn’t some normal unease, since by all means I should’ve been completely calm right now. The diplomatic papers were just things common sense would already be able to tell a person, and I was...happy right now.

And then in the back of my head, a light buzz began to tickle me. I slapped the back of my neck, expecting some mosquito or something, but...there was nothing.

And then, a buffer of silence. The food court began to look around uneasily, and the Woshua darted out from under the table to look around and see what was wrong.

Then, voices. Screams, coming from further down the hall. They screamed about demons. They screamed about eldritch evils. They screamed, in general.

And a chant. “Da’vat tek-eli-xoli! Xurdan tek-eli-xoli! Da’vat tek-eli-xoli! Xurdan tek-eli-xoli!” the voices chanted.

And an inhuman, un-monsterly reply. A reply that felt like it was being filled into our minds by a strange, psychic force.

“Tekeli-xoli! Tekeli-xoli!!”

We turned to face the source of the chanting as the monsters and humans got up and ran. From behind the corner, tendrils of white shot out, skewering the slowest of the humans and monsters, their souls impaled out of their bodies on bloody spikes of pure, dimensionless white. We leapt towards the souls, trying to catch them, only for them to be torn from the bodies of the humans and monsters, the monsters turning to dust in an instant, the humans left with large, gaping holes in their chests, blood spilling out as their soulless corpses collapsed.

And then our assailants turned the corner. White, shadowless, formless things swarmed out of the hallway, killing anyone and everyone they ‘saw’ in the same way they killed the innocents.

And the chant. The chant, growing louder.

“Tekeli-xoli! Tekeli-xoli!”

Fear began to creep into me, as I stood up. The Woshua under the table squeaked.

“We can’t leave him!” I shouted to Chara.

“Then give him to me!” Asriel shouted back as Chara’s magic, a bright red aura, flowed out of her body and into mine and Asriel’s. In an instant, my legs felt stronger, my breath fuller, and my feet lighter. We each began to cast our defensive magics, our lockets gently floating up, two glowing with a beautiful red, one glowing with a brilliant white. And then we ran.

* * *

**Chapter 2: A ~~Good~~ Bad Day**

-Chara-

 

“Left side!” I shouted as I danced out the way of a tendril coming to skewer me. It was fast, it was hard, and it blew a crater in the tile floor, but I had dodged worse. The rubble hit me in the leg, momentarily causing me to stumble. This was bad. We weren’t sure  _ where _ was safe,  _ if _ anywhere was safe. But we kept running.

Another volley of tendrils launched from the beasts behind us, blasting more craters in the floor. A sharp pain hit me in the foot as I felt a warm liquid flowing out of my leg. Blood. And hitting the floor with that leg hurt. Bruised, most likely. Shit. This was going to slow us down by a lot.

“They’re ahead of us!” Frisk screamed out. I looked up in surprise. Sure enough, they were ahead of us as well.

Fucking shit. I briefly applauded myself for my ability to conjugate curse words as I leapt at a shop window, using magic to slam into the window with a little more force, smashing it open so we could buy ourselves just a little more time. Tearing through aisles of clothing, knocking over racks, shelves, leaping over registers, we found ourselves in the staff room in the back, with a back door for merchandise...that is, blocked up by merchandise. No escape.

I motioned my siblings to get behind me. “I’ll fight them,” I told the two.

“But you don’t like fighting, Chara,” Frisk replied.

That was true. But...I’d rather me have blood on my hands than any of them. Even so, my hand trembled as I held up my magically conjured knife.

“Run.” I told the other two. The monsters came closer, and closer, and closer…

I reached into my pockets. Lots of little steel ball bearings. With magic, they were more effective than any gun. I grabbed three, channeling my magic into them, the ball bearings beginning to assume a blood-red glow.

For a brief moment, I issued a prayer. I would have to kill...again...

“No need,” a voice echoed from outside the store. Before I could look to see who said it, a slice of wind cut through the air, as the creature in front of me was sliced in two in a single stroke, both halves almost fading into nonexistence.

There stood a man. A quite-well dressed man, in fact. His golden hair was in curls, his eyes and mouth arranged in a smile as he held a golden, shimmering sword. It was cracked, but the cracks were glowing with a beautiful gold. He was pretty tall as well, easily a foot taller than me. And I had to give it to him: He rocked the Zuckerberg hoodie.

And beside him was a horse...a winged horse, a beautiful, pure white. A pegasus. It nodded.

_ Perseus, these children are powerful,  _ it...spoke.

The pegasus talked. I narrowed my eyes at it in confusion.

“Can you help Pegasus and I?” Perseus asked us. “You may be strong enough to help us save the people here. We will hold them off, you get them outside.”

**Author's Note:**

> I said I'd work on this fanfiction again once Toby released Undertale Hard Mode or Undertale 2 or whatever.
> 
> Deltarune came out today. Guess what I have to do now.


End file.
